Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

TMINY · Unread post by **TMINY** » 2021-02-28, 22:07

PM 29.0.1 x64, Win10 20H2.

If I try to print to PDF using PDFfactory or MS Print to PDF, the resulting PDF has vector outlines of characters that zoom well, but no selectable text.

This is reproducible in a clean install of PM on a clean Windows machine on different hardware.

Some discussion of this is here-
https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/ ... p/10998138
and this page also works as a testing page.

FF, Chrome, and Chromium Edge all have the same problem, but get around it by having a built-in "Save to PDF" feature in the browser's print window.

Here was a similar thread describing this behavior-
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18303&p=134776&hili ... ts#p134762

The workaround was to disable custom web fonts on the page before printing, but this is not always desirable and also requires quite a few clicks.

I have tried using Ublock Origin's remote font blocker, but that's not solving it.

My main use for Print to PDF is for web receipts. So I need to be able to copy text out of them frequently or search for keywords within a folder full of them.

Any ideas on how to improve this print functionality?

Unread post by **Moonchild** » 2021-02-28, 23:32

Solution: use a different PDF printer.
e.g. if I print this page to PDF using my PDF printer (PrimoPDF) i get PDFs with selectable text.

TMINY · Unread post by **TMINY** » 2021-02-28, 23:42

Moonchild wrote: ↑
2021-02-28, 23:32
if I print this page

Yes, this page we are on (forum page) works OK with various PDF virtual printers. But try the Adobe forum page in my first link. That has custom fonts that should reproduce the problem.

Unread post by **Moonchild** » 2021-03-01, 01:13

No problem with Primo.

TMINY · Unread post by **TMINY** » 2021-03-01, 03:40

I can't reproduce your results on a clean test VM. I installed latest PrimoPDF and tried setting it to both PDF 1.3 (default) and PDF 1.5. The resulting PDF only has Times New Roman embedded and only the header and footer selectable as text. Your PDF has numerous fonts embedded if I look at its Properties.

I tried CutePDF Writer and BullZip PDF Printer as well. Same thing... just vector outlines, but no embedded fonts.

I also have the problem when printing to Acrobat XI's virtual printer on my main machine.

Any reason why PM wouldn't pass the fonts to the printer?

Unread post by **Moonchild** » 2021-03-01, 10:24

I have no idea why it doesn't work for you.
I'm using a pretty old version of PrimoPDF, and it defaults to PDF 1.4 -- there don't seem to be any settings to control this font embedding behaviour. Of note when I print I tend to pick "eBook" format to retain as much information as possible while keeping the size small. I'm using the standard Print function from within the browser.
Clearly this isn't something the browser controls because then it would be the same result in my case.

billmcct · Unread post by **billmcct** » 2021-03-01, 14:05

Here's one from "Print pages to PDF 0.5.0.2.1" that does have selectable text and clickable links. It used to save scrollable code boxes but alas no longer does.

Print Pages to PDF does allow selectable text on all sites .pdf: (208.78 KiB) Downloaded 22 times

TMINY · Unread post by **TMINY** » 2021-03-01, 17:38

billmcct wrote: ↑
2021-03-01, 14:05
Here's one from "Print pages to PDF 0.5.0.2.1" that does have selectable text and clickable links. It used to save scrollable code boxes but alas no longer does.

Print Pages to PDF does allow selectable text on all sites .pdf

Can you also try a test using the Adobe forum link further up in this thread?

I don't think that extension is viable in Win10-64?

Moonchild wrote: ↑
2021-03-01, 10:24
Clearly this isn't something the browser controls

I've noticed if I disable gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled, I can make a PDF with embedded fonts.

Also, I did a test in IE and that embeds the fonts.

PM v28 64-bit and 32-bit both have the problem under Win 10 20H2 64-bit. As does FF v52 ESR 32-bit.

Any ideas?

Bilbo47 · Unread post by **Bilbo47** » 2021-03-01, 17:47

Confirmed here, using a different browser and different PDF printer. It's gotta be Adobe purposely preventing their pages from being saved to a useful PDF format.

TMINY · Unread post by **TMINY** » 2021-03-01, 18:02

Bilbo47 wrote: ↑
2021-03-01, 17:47
Confirmed here, using a different browser and different PDF printer. It's gotta be Adobe purposely preventing their pages from being saved to a useful PDF format.

It isn't specfic to the Adobe website. I can reproduce on any page with custom fonts-
https://fonts.google.com/

Unread post by **Moonchild** » 2021-03-01, 19:50

For the record I have also tested on Windows 10 20H2 x64, Pale Moon 29.0.1 x64. The result is what I attached previously. Yes, I do enable downloadable fonts by default because they are part of webdesign. It is not an inherent problem with the OS or the browser, as far as I can tell.
Please include troubleshooting information so we know your environment this occurs in for you. See sticky in this board.

TMINY · Unread post by **TMINY** » 2021-03-01, 20:07

Moonchild wrote: ↑
2021-03-01, 19:50
Please include troubleshooting information so we know your environment this occurs in for you. See sticky in this board.

OK, support info above. Win10 20H2, PM 29.0.1 x64. This is on a third machine I've tried -- Surface Pro.

TMINY · Unread post by **TMINY** » 2021-03-01, 20:21

I fired up a Win7-32 VM and installed PM v28 and v29 32-bit. Both versions embedded the fonts correctly. (Specifically, on the Google Fonts web page I used for testing, according to PDF Document Properties.)

So maybe this is something with how browsers are sending web fonts for printing in Win x64? It isn't sending fonts, but outlines only.

And as I mentioned before, Chrome, Chromium Edge, and FF are getting around this by including a "Save to PDF" option in their custom print dialog. I'm not sure where to look for any relevant discussion on how these browsers are (not) handling this. Maybe that would yield some clues if something was changed in Win x64 printing.

tpcsanh · Unread post by **tpcsanh** » 2021-03-01, 20:57

Here, ~~Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 2004 built-in Microsoft Print to PDF worked on the Adobe page. The text is selectabl~~e. Using the Ghostscript PDF printer: not selectable.

Update: ~~The Ghostscript PDF printer works. I did not have it at its defaults earlier.~~

PrimoPDF. Found an old manual. Per that their Print preset does not embed. Unclear if that is true today. They have other settings that embed (but the resulting file size could be larger than what you want).

Update: I thought I had closed out my browser after changing the preference, and had reloaded the page, but clearly not. In a clean profile, neither worked. My workaround has always been OCR the PDF.

tpcsanh · Unread post by **tpcsanh** » 2021-03-02, 14:54

I did the following:

Brand new profile.

Went to the Adobe site.

After page loads, this is under Console - CSS:

Code: Select all

downloadable font: OS/2: Adjusting head.macStyle (regular) to match fsSelection (font-family: "adobe-clean-serif" style:italic weight:normal stretch:normal src index:0) source: https://use.typekit.net/af/507e89/00000000000000003b9aee49/27/l?primer=7fa3915bdafdf03041871920a205bef951d72bf64dd4c4460fb992e3ecc3a862&fvd=i4&v=3  
csa7wef.css:68:12
downloadable font: hhea: bad caret offset: -56 (font-family: "adobe-clean-serif" style:italic weight:normal stretch:normal src index:0) source: https://use.typekit.net/af/507e89/00000000000000003b9aee49/27/l?primer=7fa3915bdafdf03041871920a205bef951d72bf64dd4c4460fb992e3ecc3a862&fvd=i4&v=3  
csa7wef.css:68:12
downloadable font: OS/2: Adjusting head.macStyle (regular) to match fsSelection (font-family: "adobe-clean" style:italic weight:normal stretch:normal src index:0) source: https://use.typekit.net/af/74ffb1/000000000000000000017702/27/l?primer=7cdcb44be4a7db8877ffa5c0007b8dd865b3bbc383831fe2ea177f62257a9191&fvd=i4&v=3  
csa7wef.css:32:12
downloadable font: hhea: bad caret offset: -60 (font-family: "adobe-clean" style:italic weight:normal stretch:normal src index:0) source: https://use.typekit.net/af/74ffb1/000000000000000000017702/27/l?primer=7cdcb44be4a7db8877ffa5c0007b8dd865b3bbc383831fe2ea177f62257a9191&fvd=i4&v=3  
csa7wef.css:32:12
downloadable font: OS/2: Adjusting head.macStyle (regular) to match fsSelection (font-family: "adobe-clean" style:italic weight:300 stretch:normal src index:0) source: https://use.typekit.net/af/a77c89/000000000000000000017700/27/l?primer=7cdcb44be4a7db8877ffa5c0007b8dd865b3bbc383831fe2ea177f62257a9191&fvd=i3&v=3  
csa7wef.css:50:12
downloadable font: hhea: bad caret offset: -59 (font-family: "adobe-clean" style:italic weight:300 stretch:normal src index:0) source: https://use.typekit.net/af/a77c89/000000000000000000017700/27/l?primer=7cdcb44be4a7db8877ffa5c0007b8dd865b3bbc383831fe2ea177f62257a9191&fvd=i3&v=3  
csa7wef.css:50:12
downloadable font: OS/2: Adjusting head.macStyle (regular) to match fsSelection (font-family: "adobe-clean" style:normal weight:bold stretch:normal src index:0) source: https://use.typekit.net/af/eaf09c/000000000000000000017703/27/l?primer=7cdcb44be4a7db8877ffa5c0007b8dd865b3bbc383831fe2ea177f62257a9191&fvd=n7&v=3  
csa7wef.css:38:12

I searched on this: "downloadable font: hhea: bad caret offset: -59".

Found this:

Firefox throws error "downloadable font: hhea: bad caret offset:" [...] in console

"So in each case, OTS issues a warning message to advise that the font resource is in violation of the OpenType spec requirements (although in these cases it is still usable)."

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1603367

I deleted this:

Code: Select all

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://use.typekit.net/csa7wef.css">

I printed the page using the MS Print to PDF and Ghostcript PDF. Selectable text in both.

Unread post by **Moonchild** » 2021-03-02, 15:27

So iow your pdf printers rejected a bad font and converted them to shapes, and mine did not.
I still don't see how that is our problem. I think typekit.net needs to fix their fonts and not rely on browsers to sanitize them for them.

TMINY · Unread post by **TMINY** » 2021-03-02, 15:49

Moonchild wrote: ↑
2021-03-02, 15:27
I think typekit.net needs to fix their fonts and not rely on browsers to sanitize them for them.

I don't think it is just Adobe. Can you reproduce the problem at this Google page? (Test print just pages 2-3.)
https://fonts.google.com/

Unread post by **Moonchild** » 2021-03-02, 16:43

Just having brief snippets of text won't have the fonts embedded because it would be wasteful to do so. I don't think you can blame PDF printers for employing best effort to keep file sizes small and be efficient in that case. Keep in mind that PDF is primarily a visual output format. I've had to educate people many times in my translation profession of that too "Please translate this PDF" isn't that simple, but it seems most people don't understand why. It's closer to a postscript format than a source document.

TMINY · Unread post by **TMINY** » 2021-03-02, 17:10

Moonchild wrote: ↑
2021-03-02, 16:43
Keep in mind that PDF is primarily a visual output format. It's closer to a postscript format than a source document.

I am not the person to argue for what a PDF is or isn't supposed to be... I am just trying to save receipts from the internet with selectable/searchable text.

If this can't be fixed, can you implement a "Save to PDF" feature as FF and Chrome do to work around this issue?

Moonchild wrote: ↑
2021-03-02, 16:43
Just having brief snippets of text won't have the fonts embedded because it would be wasteful to do so. I don't think you can blame PDF printers for employing best effort to keep file sizes small and be efficient in that case.

Most PDF writers will embed a subset a font if the character set is less than 100%. This is how they save space. But that's not the case here. The PDF printer doesn't seem to be receiving the fonts from the browser, yes?

TMINY · Unread post by **TMINY** » 2021-03-02, 17:22

Keep in mind, this is working correctly in Win7-32 according to my testing. So something has changed in Win10-64.

I can offer a bounty to get this fixed, if that helps.

Pale Moon forum

Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

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Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites

Re: Print to PDF not allowing selectable text on some sites